Journal article
Tobacco smoking policies in Australian alcohol and other drug treatment services, agreement between staff awareness and the written policy document
BMC Public Health, Vol.17, pp.1-9
2017
PMCID: PMC5240295
PMID: 28095823
Abstract
Background: Comprehensive smoke-free policy in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) setting provides an opportunity to reduce tobacco related harms among clients and staff. This study aimed to examine within AOD services: staff awareness of their service's smoking policy compared to the written policy document and staff and service factors associated with accurate awareness of a total ban and perceived enforcement of a total ban.
Methods: An audit of written tobacco smoking policy documents and an online cross-sectional survey of staff from 31 Australian AOD services. In addition, a contact at each service was interviewed to gather service-related data.
Results: Overall, 506 staff participated in the survey (response rate: 57%). Nearly half (46%) perceived their service had a total ban with 54% indicating that this policy was always enforced. Over one-third (37%) reported a partial ban with 48% indicating that this policy was always enforced. The audit of written policies revealed that 19 (61%) services had total bans, 11 (36%) had partial bans and 1 (3%) did not have a written smoking policy. Agreement between staff policy awareness and their service's written policy was moderate (Kappa 0.48) for a total ban and fair (Kappa 0.38) for a partial ban. Age (1 year increase) of staff was associated with higher odds of correctly identifying a total ban at their service.
Conclusions: Tobacco smoking within Australian AOD services is mostly regulated by a written policy document. Staff policy awareness was modest and perceived policy enforcement was poor.
Details
- Title
- Tobacco smoking policies in Australian alcohol and other drug treatment services, agreement between staff awareness and the written policy document
- Authors
- Eliza Skelton (Corresponding Author) - University of Newcastle AustraliaBillie Bonevski - University of Newcastle AustraliaFlora Tzelepis - University of Newcastle AustraliaAnthony Shakeshaft - UNSW SydneyAshleigh Guillaumier - University of Newcastle AustraliaAdrian Dunlop - Hunter New England Local Health DistrictSam McCrabb - University of Newcastle AustraliaKerrin Palazzi - Hunter Medical Research Institute
- Publication details
- BMC Public Health, Vol.17, pp.1-9
- Publisher
- BioMed Central Ltd.
- Date published
- 2017
- DOI
- 10.1186/s12889-016-3968-y
- ISSN
- 1471-2458
- PMID
- 28095823; PMC5240295
- Copyright note
- © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Grants
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991242158702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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